WudStay acquires Awesome Stays; to expand to 65 cities

Budget hotels aggregator WudStay has acquired Awesome Stays, a two year old offline budget hotel aggregator for an undisclosed amount, to expand to new markets of Varanasi, Goa, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Dehradun and Pune, reports ET. Deepak Sharma, CEO of Awesome Stays, will join WudStay with his team. Mint reports that it was an all cash and stock deal.

With the acquisition, WudStay plans to expand to 65 new cities in the next 18 months. It currently operates in Gurgaon, Manali, Delhi, Corbett, Haridwar and Jaipur, where it reportedly saw 3,000 night bookings in July. According to a VCCircle report, Awesome Stays was taking 6,000 orders a month.

Founded by Prafulla Mathur, WudStay was launched in April this year and started operations in June. Last month, it raised $3 million in a series A round of funding from Mangrove Capital Partners and Nimbuzz CEO Vikas Saxena. The platform planned to use the funds for hiring, expanding its operators and building its technology platform. As a part of the investment, Saxena and a representative of Mangrove Capital joined the startup’s board.

WudStay claimed to have tie ups with around 40 guest houses and boutiques in Gurgaon and Jaipur for 400 rooms. It mentioned that it would expand to another 65 cities over the next few months. The rooms are offered for rent on the platform for Rs 999 to Rs 1,399.

Competition:

– Earlier this month, branded budget hotel rooms service OYO Rooms raised $100 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Group, with participation from existing investors Greenoaks Capital, Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed India. OYO said it would use the funding to implement new customer experience initiatives, build technology products, and extend its network.

– Last week, room rental service Zo Rooms raised $30 million from existing investors Tiger Global Management and Orios Venture Partners. The startup will use the funds for expanding to other cities. Just last month Zo Rooms had raised an undisclosed amount from the same investors, an amount to be pegged at $5 million.

– Chennai-based Insara Technologies, which operates hotel booking site Stayzilla, raised $20 million in a Series B round of funding led by Nexus Ventures and with participation from existing investor Matrix Partners India.

– Other than this, more established online travel agents such as MakeMyTrip, Cleartrip and Yatra etc., have hotel booking services.

– There’s also reverse bidding sites such as Findmystay and 90bids.com where travelers quote prices they are willing to pay and the website offers them hotels with closest fares.